


If it ain't broken

by marieincolour



Category: White Collar
Genre: Broken Bones, Comfort, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Multi, Snow and Ice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-06
Updated: 2013-06-06
Packaged: 2017-12-14 04:23:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/832699
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marieincolour/pseuds/marieincolour
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's a snow rugby match on, and Neal is roped in to play. It's not great.</p>
            </blockquote>





	If it ain't broken

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Neither White Collar or any of the characters belong to me, I'm merely borrowing. 
> 
> A/N: This has not been beta read. Enjoy.

  
  
He checks the weather report before he even gets out of bed that morning, his fingers clumsy and sleepy on the touch screen of his phone as he tries to figure out how to make his phone show New York. He's half hoping for clouds with heavy droplets of grey rain, but instead a light, fluffy cloud drifts across his screen, not even trying to obscure the giant yellow cartoon sun behind it. 

He closes his eyes and sets his alarm three minutes from then just to give himself a few more minutes before has to get out of bed and squirm into the snow gear he set out the previous night, smelling slightly funny from the wooden chest he keeps it in when he doesn't need it. 

Which is to say that five tags dated three years ago are piled on top of each other in the garbage can, and his boots are still drying from having been given a good spray of waterproofing stuff the night before. 

"Snow day in the park" doesn't sound like his thing at all, but he promised to take part, and so there's little left to do but join the rest of the division in a game of snow-rugby, even if his plans are to stand by the side and enjoy a hot cup of cocoa with El. 

"It'll be fun!" Peter-from-Friday says in his head, sounding affronted and a little baffled as to  _why_ Neal isn't jumping with joy at the thought of wrestling a dozen grown men and women for a rubber ball in the cold weather outside. He twirls his pen and loses it over the edge of the desk, and Neal can't keep in a snort even as he bends to pick it up. 

"It'll be good for you. You're getting pale, you need to get out more. Besides, I'd have thought you'd enjoy beating organised crime. I'll even take you to lunch after, there's this great little diner that serves this  _great..."_

He still doesn't know  _why_ he agreed, but somehow the words had escaped his mouth without any kind of cooperation from his brain. 

"Fine. When?"

And now there's little left to do apart from squirming into enough wool to put any sheep to shame to make sure that even if he does have to spend the majority of the morning outside in the snow, the only thing that'll get cold is the tip of his nose.

That's not to say that he's not having cold feet about coming altogether, though.

-

El is bundled up in a bizarre combination of lady winter fashion gear and some kind of alpine skiing nightmare in purple, with a woolly hat on top of her brown hair, and Neal gets the sense that she doesn't have to come to this sort of gathering very often. Her cheeks are red and rosy in the cold, and Neal suspects his are the same after an hour of laughing at the various calamities on the field in front of them his colleagues have to offer. He's sniffling from the cold air every three seconds, and his fingers are frozen in great lumps of skin inside his gloves, but it's not so bad, really. Not at all. He tells El all about the time he got "lost" in Aruba with a great big boat.

"So I was just about to turn around, you know, because.. Well. Engine trouble. Don't want oil on linen, it'd  _never_ come out, and..."

There's a yell from the field, and he turns his gaze from El's blue eyes just in time to observe Jones throwing himself into a pile of snow with the man Neal has secretly named "Douche who doesn't hold the elevator doors", only to come squirming out of it a second later with both hands wrapped tightly around his ankle, squinting in pain. 

Neal makes all the right faces of concern, even as his story drops from an enthusiastic rendition of running from the coast guard,  _allegedly,_ because he knows what this means even before Peter calls it out. 

"Neal! You're up, Jones is going to sit this one out. C'mon, you've been having enough cocoa to feed the third world!"

He makes a good show of squaring his shoulders even while El holds a hand to her face to stifle her giggling. 

_ Fuck.  _

\- 

Contact sport isn't his  _ thing,  _ truth be told. He's all right with bikes and with running, swimming, and hell. Even Yoga or fucking Pilates, but rugby? A kind of barbaric sort of football where protection isn't required because losing your teeth will happen anyway, and what are ribs even for if not to be broken? 

Nah. He'll probably pass. 

He finds himself watching with a sort of detached bewilderment as Peter raises his arm, like he's the battalion leader on some kind of bizarre civil war reenactment that involves a lot of beanies, gloves and timberland-branded clothes on people with a Saturday morning-beard and it's their goddamned  _ duty  _ to make sure the guys on the other end of the field stay on their goddamned part of the field, which  _ looks exactly like the other one,  _ and... 

And then there is no more time for mocking, because he's being pushed from behind so he can keep up with the screaming bunch of guys around him, charging head first into the oncoming rampage of organised crime-agents. 

He's only got the time to think  _ "I don't think this is how Rugby is supposed to go down"  _ before the other army hits, head first into their little group where the ball is going into the air like they've all forgotten that this isn't actually volleyball, and then... 

Well. 

He sits on the ground for a moment, trying to catch his breath through the pain thrumming through his body along with liberal amounts of surprise and shock that what he just ran into felt as much as a wall or a large rock as it did, but then the endorphins kick in, happily distributing a bit of order to the chaos. He looks up in time to see Peter come towards him, one hand stretched out, snow clinging to the soft fabric of his hat, grinning like an absolute lunatic. 

"Come on, Caffrey, it's our turn now."

Neal isn't sure  _ what _ it's their turn to do, but it doesn't matter, because he only manages to close his eyes as he clutches his right arm to his chest as tight as it'll go, feeling the pain spread through his upper back, his thigh, but mostly his goddamned wrist. 

  
"Peter, I.." He chokes, then swallows it back, and shakes his head. 

"I'm going to go back to El and watch for a bit." He says, wondering why he's saying it even as it's coming out. 

"Cowboy up, Neal. Clinton managed three games before he swapped out."

"Yeah, well, I'm better suited for making sure the cocoa stays warm." Neal manages, irritation creeping into his voice as his wrist pulsates with blistering pain. 

"Wuss!" Peter calls, turning around to jog over to where there's a huddle of some kind over towards the end of the pitch where their team started out, and Neal climbs to his feet unsteadily, like a baby deer wobbling on achy, bruised legs where snow is starting to leak in between the pants and the boots where there's a thin sliver of skin showing. 

He takes his place next to El again to the sound of a war cry from behind him, but he can't find it in himself to care much as he tries to cushion the fall down to the mat on the snow El rolled out previously. His boots fit neatly into the deep holes he dug with his heals while spilling cocoa over his gloves, but his right arm stays tucked tight against his chest as if to ward off the pain for a bit longer. 

It's not the first time he's broken an arm, and he's fairly certain it  _ is  _ broken, but it's the first time he hasn't howled like a beaten beagle and insisted on seeing a doctor straight away, and he doesn't really know  _ why  _ he's not insisting on seeing one right now, either. 

  
"That's your entire contribution to victory?" El asks, sardonically, and Neal knows she cares as little about the game as he does. 

"I'm injured" he says, displaying his right arm proudly, pushing down the whimper of pain running through him at the tiny movement. 

She snorts, and he pouts at her, making sure to widen his eyes like he's being extra super-duper honest. 

"You're a girl, Caffrey!" Jones contributes from the chair next to them, brought by someone who apparently thinks snow equals beach chair in the park-day, his leg propped on an improvised foot stool made of hard packed snow.

"At least I made it a full game before I went for the cocoa!"

Neal grins at him as broadly as he can, turning his face back to the game where Peter is arguing with the captain of the other team loudly and voraciously, and the ball lies forgotten to the side of the pitch as both sides retreat to their respective corners. 

"I'm pretty certain that's  _ not  _ how you play rugby.", El says out of the side of her mouth as the two parties charge at each other again, ending in what looks like the biggest pile-up Neal has ever seen.

-

The adrenaline and endorphins his body has been pushing at him over the last hour or so drains away as he gulps down a last swallow of chocolatey milk, gone cold from sitting out for too long, too sweet against the back of his throat after endless hours of having nothing else to do but sip away at it. He feels shaky and a little sick, the pain pulsating up to his jaw now. The elastics of his gloves and jacket feel tight against his swollen skin, and it's too warm. Hot. Blistering, boiling hot under the wool. 

He gets to his knees and then to his feet slowly as Peter argues with El over where to have dinner.

"...I'm telling you, hon, you'll  _ love this place." _

It's not an unfamiliar argument, because Peter spends, in Neal's mind, far too much time convincing the two of them to go to places that serve all manners of unspeakable items without ever actually gaining any headway with either one of them, but the sheer enthusiasm annoys him more than anything this time.

He opens his mouth to say so, but closes it again as he staggers off to the right, his legs stiff and his head swimming now that he's suddenly upright. He shivers a little in the cold air, even through the layers of clothes he's wearing, and El's eyes stare straight at him. 

"Been sitting down too long.." He offers, shrugging a little. El regards him with a critical eye while he makes an effort to stay upright and not look quite so forlorn and cold, and feigns off having to carry anything to their car by hanging back for a few moments, fiddling with the elastic on the bottom of his coat and their accidental snag on his glove. 

He meets up with Peter and El just as they're packing the snowy picnic basket into the back seat, and Neal wriggles up next to Peter to slide into that seat when Peter turns, his arm smacking straight into Neal's right side. He's reaching for the sitting pad El has in her arms, but it becomes a reach for Neal as he doubles over in pain instead, panting harshly as the pain swallows him whole. 

"Guh..." He manages, closing his eyes tightly, wiping his eyes off against the shoulder of his jacket before straightening slightly, Peter's hand still on his arm.  
"Neal? What happened?"

"'s.. No, 'm okay. Just... Let's get going, huh?"

He goes from pained and confused to bouncy CI in a heartbeat, but Peter's eyes narrow at him as he goes, and Neal flushes a little at the thought that he's being ridiculous and childish in the first place, and that there is no good reason to pretend he's not in pain, and...

  
"I didn't bump you  _ that _ hard earlier, did I?"

Right. That's why. Peter watches him with those wide eyes of his, looking entirely confused as to why  _ any  _ man out there would ever turn down a day of violence and frozen toes at all to sit on the sidelines and chat about gallery openings and culinary arts, so Neal just shakes his head. 

"Dream on, Burke. Just a stomach cramp from all the cocoa."

He leans his forehead against the cool window once he's sitting down, his seatbelt buckled awkwardly with his left hand and the married couple up front arguing about "Home!" or "...but El, I think you'll really  _ like  _ this one!". 

-

He's undressing in the Burke's suburban hallway half an hour later, leaving a growing pile of wet wool around him as he tries to shed the wet layers. He leaves his pants and shoes for last, because he doesn't know how he's meant to bend over far enough to undo the laces, or how to unclasp his pants with only one hand when El flings out an arm while trying to catch the glove he's kept on on his right hand, and hits his arm a little harder than she'd intended. 

The following whimper seems to reverberate around the ground floor even as Neal swallows back the pain and then "This is ridiculous!" again. 

  
"What's wrong?" El asks, looking genuinely concerned about him when he manages to open his eyes again, and his voice is gruff when he answers. 

"Just... Just landed on it wrong earlier, 's 'kay."

Peter is there, then, and maybe Neal closed his eyes again or maybe he was there already, and his hands are gentle as they dislodge the glove from his hand. It still has Neal groaning with the pulsating pain that follows, but the hiss of breath from the both of them makes him feel almost an obscene amount better almost straight away. El rubs her hand up and down Neal's back, right on the stiff, bruised muscles from earlier, and he leans into it a little as Peter tears the sleeve of his henley to get it wide enough to be pushed up his arm to take a look. His arm is nearly black with the swelling around his wrist all the way up his fingers, and he has to swallow back a wave of nausea as he stares at it.  _ God.  _

"Why the  _ hell  _ didn't you say anything?", Peter booms, looking furious and concerned and halfway through pulling on his boots all at the same time.

"I didn't... You... I..." Neal tries, but El shakes her head at him, and stares up at Peter. 

"Not now, Peter. Time to go to the ER, sweetie" she says, looking up at Neal for the last bit, her eyes cloudy with tears and her mouth turned downwards despite the smile she's trying to put on it. And Neal nods, his coat somehow floating up to wrap around his shoulders all by itself, and then he's being bundled out to the car again, sitting in the back with El this time, feeling foolish and guilty.

And then he's sitting in a hard-backed plastic chair in the ER, his head on Peter's shoulder as Peter fills out the form in his hands that has Neal's name on it, all of his details, scrawled out in Peter's childishly messy scrawl. His wrist aches, feels blisteringly warm even with the cold icepack wrapped around it and El rubbing her thumb over the same spot on his neck over and over again. 

A doctor about the age of his oldest pair of shoes poke and prod at his wrist, managing somehow to dig his fingers into all the spots that make his vision swim with dots, Peter snarling about painkillers over him all the while. 

"There's at least one break", the doctor says, writing on his pad in a way that suggests he never learned how to write and is in fact doodling large loopy circles on the paper in front of him, "but it's hard to know if it needs to be set before we've done an x-ray. I'll get you down for that as soon as possible, but there's a bit of a wait."

He makes as if to walk off when Peter repeats his tirade about painkillers, and Neal can't even find it in himself to moan as his badge is pulled into the whole mess. 

He leans back on his cot instead, his coat wrapped up around him like a makeshift blanket, and El looks down at him with a soft, worried expression on her face.

"Why didn't you say anything? I was sitting right next to you all that time!"

He shrugs. "It didn't seem important."

"Didn't seem... Neal, you  _ broke your wrist.  _ How is that not important? Oh god, you  _ said,  _ didn't you? And I... Oh god,  _ Neal. _ "

"Okay, so.. A little important, but I just didn't... I don't know, El."

There must be something in his voice that stops her from replying, though she purses her lips at him and looks like there's a hell of a lot of stuff she wants to say.

"I can't fix it if I don't know it's wrong." She says, eventually. 

"Sorry." Neal mumbles, just as a nurse makes her way through the door with supplies for an IV and whatever else Neal is getting. 

Peter's fingers are firm on his socked feet as she pokes the needle through the soft skin of his elbow a few moments later, El's fingers tight on his shoulder. He closes his eyes to let the drugs run their way through his system and take away the pulsating ache in his wrist. 

-

His arm is too swollen to be put in a proper cast yet, is the verdict. Two breaks, one smaller fracture in a finger, and a dislocated thumb coupled with an almost surreal amount of luck that he doesn't require surgery. On top of that an impressive amount of gauze and plaster still drying, heavy and warm and wet on his arm, held together with skin coloured bandages that are to be removed in three days when the swelling has gone down and they can put on a proper cast that isn't the size of Brazil. 

It aches, but because the arm isn't attached to  _ him  _ anymore, that's all right. He feels a little sick from the mild anaesthetic they gave him to set the bones properly, but mostly loopy from whatever drugs they're keeping him on, the rest of the pills clinking merrily in Peter's pocket. They pour him into the car where he lets his head rest against El's chest and shoulder, her fingers in his hair as they drive through the dark streets, the pavement covered in dirty-grey snow, the plaster drying and tightening around his pulsating arm. 

His feet are all pruned up when Peter relieves him of the thick socks he's been wearing all day, his skin damp from the heat under his ski pants and his face red from the cold, and the flannel sheets of the Burke's bed feel nice and soft against him as he squirms to get comfortable with the mountain of plaster attached to him in a soft, blue sling. Peter dislodges it carefully, hands cold against the hot skin of Neal's chest and arm. He shivers. 

"'m sorry." He whispers once they're both snug up against him, El's fingers running little circles on his neck. 

"It's okay..." She responds quietly, sounding like she's close to sleep herself. 

"I don't get why you didn't tell us, but it's okay. You'll be okay."

Peter's fingers close tight against his stomach for a moment, and then ease up. There's the wet sensation of a kiss to his forehead, and then Neal can't stop himself from closing his eyes and float away in a state closer to a drugged unconsciousness than real, restful sleep before the real thing will take over some time in the early morning.

He doesn't know why he didn't say anything either, and sandwiched between El and Peter, warm and relatively pain-free, having to go back to his apartment with a black and blue wrist all alone sounds hellish and horrible, but yeah. 

He's okay. It's okay. 

And maybe next time he'll trust them a little more.  
  
-fin-  


  



End file.
